CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE "YELLOW DRAGON"
Spargo, changing his clothes, washing away the dust of his journey, inthat old-fashioned lavender-scented bedroom, busied his mind infurther speculations on his plan of campaign in Market Milcaster. Hehad no particularly clear plan. The one thing he was certain of wasthat in the old leather box which the man whom he knew as John Marburyhad deposited with the London and Universal Safe Deposit Company, heand Rathbury had discovered one of the old silver tickets of MarketMilcaster racecourse, and that he, Spargo, had come to MarketMilcaster, with the full approval of his editor, in an endeavour totrace it. How was he going to set about this difficult task?
"The first thing," said Spargo to himself as he tied a new tie, "is tohave a look round. That'll be no long job."
For he had already seen as he approached the town, and as he drove fromthe station to the "Yellow Dragon" Hotel, that Market Milcaster was avery small place. It chiefly consisted of one long, widethoroughfare--the High Street--with smaller streets leading from it oneither side. In the High Street seemed to be everything that the towncould show--the ancient parish church, the town hall, the market cross,the principal houses and shops, the bridge, beneath which ran the riverwhereon ships had once come up to the town before its mouth, four milesaway, became impassably silted up. It was a bright, clean, little town,but there were few signs of trade in it, and Spargo had been quick tonotice that in the "Yellow Dragon," a big, rambling old hostelry,reminiscent of the old coaching days, there seemed to be little doing.He had eaten a bit of lunch in the coffee-room immediately on hisarrival; the coffee-room was big enough to accommodate a hundred andfifty people, but beyond himself, an old gentleman and his daughter,evidently tourists, two young men talking golf, a man who looked likean artist, and an unmistakable honeymooning couple, there was no one init. There was little traffic in the wide street beneath Spargo'swindows; little passage of people to and fro on the sidewalks; here acountryman drove a lazy cow as lazily along; there a farmer in hislight cart sat idly chatting with an aproned tradesman, who had comeout of his shop to talk to him. Over everything lay the quiet of thesunlight of the summer afternoon, and through the open windows stole afaint, sweet scent of the new-mown hay lying in the meadows outside theold houses.
"A veritable Sleepy Hollow," mused Spargo. "Let's go down and see ifthere's anybody to talk to. Great Scott!--to think that I was in thepoisonous atmosphere of the Octoneumenoi only sixteen hours ago!"
Spargo, after losing himself in various corridors and passages, finallylanded in the wide, stone-paved hall of the old hotel, and with a sureinstinct turned into the bar-parlour which he had noticed when heentered the place. This was a roomy, comfortable, bow-windowedapartment, looking out upon the High Street, and was furnished andornamented with the usual appurtenances of country-town hotels. Therewere old chairs and tables and sideboards and cupboards, which hadcertainly been made a century before, and seemed likely to endure for acentury or two longer; there were old prints of the road and the chase,and an old oil-painting or two of red-faced gentlemen in pink coats;there were foxes' masks on the wall, and a monster pike in a glass caseon a side-table; there were ancient candlesticks on the mantelpiece andan antique snuff-box set between them. Also there was a small,old-fashioned bar in a corner of the room, and a new-fashioned youngwoman seated behind it, who was yawning over a piece of fancyneedlework, and looked at Spargo when he entered as Andromeda may havelooked at Perseus when he made arrival at her rock. And Spargo,treating himself to a suitable drink and choosing a cigar to accompanyit, noted the look, and dropped into the nearest chair.
"This," he remarked, eyeing the damsel with enquiry, "appears to me tobe a very quiet place."
"Quiet!" exclaimed the lady. "Quiet?"
"That," continued Spargo, "is precisely what I observed. Quiet. I seethat you agree with me. You expressed your agreement with two shades ofemphasis, the surprised and the scornful. We may conclude, thus far,that the place is undoubtedly quiet."
The damsel looked at Spargo as if she considered him in the light of anew specimen, and picking up her needlework she quitted the bar andcoming out into the room took a chair near his own.
"It makes you thankful to see a funeral go by here," she remarked."It's about all that one ever does see."
"Are there many?" asked Spargo. "Do the inhabitants die much ofinanition?"
The damsel gave Spargo another critical inspection.
"Oh, you're joking!" she said. "It's well you can. Nothing ever happenshere. This place is a back number."
"Even the back numbers make pleasant reading at times," murmuredSpargo. "And the backwaters of life are refreshing. Nothing doing inthis town, then?" he added in a louder voice.
"Nothing!" replied his companion. "It's fast asleep. I came here fromBirmingham, and I didn't know what I was coming to. In Birmingham yousee as many people in ten minutes as you see here in ten months."
"Ah!" said Spargo. "What you are suffering from is dulness. You musthave an antidote."
"Dulness!" exclaimed the damsel. "That's the right word for MarketMilcaster. There's just a few regular old customers drop in here of amorning, between eleven and one. A stray caller looks in--perhapsduring the afternoon. Then, at night, a lot of old fogies sitround that end of the room and talk about old times. Old times,indeed!--what they want in Market Milcaster is new times."
Spargo pricked up his ears.
"Well, but it's rather interesting to hear old fogies talk about oldtimes," he said. "I love it!"
"Then you can get as much of it as ever you want here," remarked thebarmaid. "Look in tonight any time after eight o'clock, and if youdon't know more about the history of Market Milcaster by ten than youdid when you sat down, you must be deaf. There are some old gentlemendrop in here every night, regular as clockwork, who seem to feel thatthey couldn't go to bed unless they've told each other stories aboutold days which I should think they've heard a thousand times already!"
"Very old men?" asked Spargo.
"Methuselahs," replied the lady. "There's old Mr. Quarterpage, acrossthe way there, the auctioneer, though he doesn't do any businessnow--they say he's ninety, though I'm sure you wouldn't take him formore than seventy. And there's Mr. Lummis, further down thestreet--he's eighty-one. And Mr. Skene, and Mr. Kaye--they're regularpatriarchs. I've sat here and listened to them till I believe I couldwrite a history of Market Milcaster since the year One."
"I can conceive of that as a pleasant and profitable occupation," saidSpargo.
He chatted a while longer in a fashion calculated to cheer thebarmaid's spirits, after which he went out and strolled around the townuntil seven o'clock, the "Dragon's" hour for dinner. There were no morepeople in the big coffee-room than there had been at lunch and Spargowas glad, when his solitary meal was over, to escape to thebar-parlour, where he took his coffee in a corner near to that sacredpart in which the old townsmen had been reported to him to sit.
"And mind you don't sit in one of their chairs," said the barmaid,warningly. "They all have their own special chairs and their specialpipes there on that rack, and I suppose the ceiling would fall in ifanybody touched pipe or chair. But you're all right there, and you'llhear all they've got to say."
To Spargo, who had never seen anything of the sort before, and who,twenty-four hours previously, would have believed the thing impossible,the proceedings of that evening in the bar-parlour of the "YellowDragon" at Market Milcaster were like a sudden transference to theeighteenth century. Precisely as the clock struck eight and a bellbegan to toll somewhere in the recesses of the High Street, an oldgentleman walked in, and the barmaid, catching Spargo's eye, gave him aglance which showed that the play was about to begin.
"Good evening, Mr. Kaye," said the barmaid. "You're first tonight."
"Evening," said Mr. Kaye and took a seat, scowled around him, andbecame silent. He was a tall, lank old gentleman, clad in rusty blackclothes, with a pointed collar sticking up on both sides of his fring
eof grey whisker and a voluminous black neckcloth folded several timesround his neck, and by the expression of his countenance was inclinedto look on life severely. "Nobody been in yet?" asked Mr. Kaye. "No,but here's Mr. Lummis and Mr. Skene," replied the barmaid.
Two more old gentlemen entered the bar-parlour. Of these, one was alittle, dapper-figured man, clad in clothes of an eminently sportingcut, and of very loud pattern; he sported a bright blue necktie, aflower in his lapel, and a tall white hat, which he wore at a rakishangle. The other was a big, portly, bearded man with a Falstaffianswagger and a rakish eye, who chaffed the barmaid as he entered, andgave her a good-humoured chuck under the chin as he passed her. Thesetwo also sank into chairs which seemed to have been specially designedto meet them, and the stout man slapped the arms of his as familiarlyas he had greeted the barmaid. He looked at his two cronies.
"Well?" he said, "Here's three of us. And there's a symposium."
"Wait a bit, wait a bit," said the dapper little man. "Grandpa'll behere in a minute. We'll start fair."
The barmaid glanced out of the window.
"There's Mr. Quarterpage coming across the street now," she announced."Shall I put the things on the table?"
"Aye, put them on, my dear, put them on!" commanded the fat man. "Haveall in readiness."
The barmaid thereupon placed a round table before the sacred chairs,set out upon it a fine old punch-bowl and the various ingredients formaking punch, a box of cigars, and an old leaden tobacco-box, and shehad just completed this interesting prelude to the evening's discoursewhen the door opened again and in walked one of the most remarkable oldmen Spargo had ever seen. And by this time, knowing that this was thevenerable Mr. Benjamin Quarterpage, of whom Crowfoot had told him, hetook good stock of the newcomer as he took his place amongst hisfriends, who on their part received him with ebullitions of delightwhich were positively boyish.
Mr. Quarterpage was a youthful buck of ninety--a middle-sized,sturdily-built man, straight as a dart, still active of limb,clear-eyed, and strong of voice. His clean-shaven old countenance wasruddy as a sun-warmed pippin; his hair was still only silvered; hishand was steady as a rock. His clothes of buff-coloured whipcord weresmart and jaunty, his neckerchief as gay as if he had been going to afair. It seemed to Spargo that Mr. Quarterpage had a pretty long leaseof life before him even at his age.
Spargo, in his corner, sat fascinated while the old gentlemen begantheir symposium. Another, making five, came in and joined them--thefive had the end of the bar-parlour to themselves. Mr. Quarterpage madethe punch with all due solemnity and ceremony; when it was ladled outeach man lighted his pipe or took a cigar, and the tongues began towag. Other folk came and went; the old gentlemen were oblivious ofanything but their own talk. Now and then a young gentleman of the towndropped in to take his modest half-pint of bitter beer and to dally inthe presence of the barmaid; such looked with awe at the patriarchs: asfor the patriarchs themselves they were lost in the past.
Spargo began to understand what the damsel behind the bar meant whenshe said that she believed she could write a history of MarketMilcaster since the year One. After discussing the weather, the localevents of the day, and various personal matters, the old fellows got toreminiscences of the past, telling tale after tale, recalling incidentupon incident of long years before. At last they turned to memories ofracing days at Market Milcaster. And at that Spargo determined on abold stroke. Now was the time to get some information. Taking thesilver ticket from his purse, he laid it, the heraldic deviceuppermost, on the palm of his hand, and approaching the group with apolite bow, said quietly:
"Gentlemen, can any of you tell me anything about that?"